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Summer break & Sports camps

The boys are on Summer break now, so we signed Brodie up for sports camp at the school. The first week was Soccer camp, the next was Baseball camp, and the last week was Basketball camp. Jonah also went to Basketball camp and I helped out for 3 days.

Otherwise, we've had a quiet couple of weeks, which is good. It doesn't make for exciting blogging, but it does make for a little calm and normalcy, which is the good part. We've had some typical life stuff happen:Our car got broken into downtown but they only made off with a cloth bag of Alisha's that had a couple of snacks in it and the boys 3 drinking cups.I had a little spot frozen off my nose that I'd had for about a year that the doctor thought was a little basal cell carcinoma (skin cancer). He might have to freeze it a few times or eventually cut it out, but it's not the serious kind of skin cancer and doesn't spread. Honestly, I'm not even convinced that it's actually skin cancer - without testing it there's no way they could tell from just looking at it.

Alisha has been working out regularly, and has the eMi ladies over each Tuesday night at our house so that's been fun for her. They cram in our Living Room and have fun with Tony Horton and Traci (my sister) in the Beachbody videos. She also runs a couple times a week with neighbor Lynne.

I've been working on finishing up my project - we're aiming to have the report done by mid-July. I've also been working on reviewing new projects and meeting with some organizations about their upcoming projects. My desk is overflowing with applications from ministries who need our help. Unfortunately, because of a lack of staff, we are not able to help all the ministries who contact us. Right now, we are booked through Fall 2009 (i.e. if someone dropped off an application today, the earliest we could help them would be Spring 2010). Unbelievable. So pray for more staff for us here!

The other big news is that we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Alisha's parents. They were all set to leave Saturday evening (Pacific Standard Time), but when they woke up Saturday morning, they had an email in their inbox from British Airways (BA) that their flight had been cancelled. No alternate plan, no mention of other flights or rebooking plan! Needless to say, they were pretty panicked! They had already checkin in online Friday night and had their boarding passes all printed out! Well, after 4 1/2 hours of haggling and phone calls with BA they were finally able to get on a flight that leaves monday late afternoon - so they'll arrive two days later than their original itinerary. However, they had to upgrade to business class to get on that flight, and so they are being told that they'll have to pay an additional $900!

They'll be fighting that for sure - I told them to use eMi as leverage, since we easily exceed 100 international flights a year (organization-wide). So stay tuned - I'll update on here if BA comes through and doesn't charge them extra. It's really outrageous for them to try to do so.

So, we were a little disappointed that we have to wait an extra two days, but it's a whole lot better than what they were being told for much of that 4 1/2 hours, which was that the earliest they could get on a flight would be July 21st! Outreagous! The boys were a little bummed when they woke up this morning to find out they'd have to wait two more days, but they are excited for Wednesday now!

Pictures: (top) Graysen and his friend (& next door neighbor) Liana hanging out while the older kids are at Basketball camp; (next) Jonah heading down court on a fast break (kind of!); (next) the boys playing in their makeshift pools in the yard - yes, we are feeding them! Everytime there's a picture of the boys with their shirts off on this blog we get emails from concerned family members that the boys are too thin! If anything, they're "beefier" than I was when I was their age! Ha! (next) "Me and the kids" Basketball camp for 7 and 8 years olds who have never played before, with 1 hoop that only half the kids can reach, is 'interesting'. More like herding cats. (next) Brodie behind Coach Nick at camp, listening...perfectly. hmmm. (next) Me and the boys having water-color paint night thanks to Mom C. for sending us water paints! (last) Brodie's water paint creation mid-stream. His final picture was awesome. I wanted to hang it up at work but he wouldn't let me - he wanted it for his room! He told me I could just hang the picture I did up at work - ha! Not only was it terrible, but what kind of a dufus hangs a water colored pictured that HE drew up at work?! "Hey Brad, cool picture. Which one of your kids colored that? Uhh, I did it." Loser!

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Hey guys, great as always to read the reports of what's going on in your new world. I love the expression "hearding cats" very creative Brad! Hope everyone has arrived safely by now? We are in Saratoga with Lisa and the boys for the week. Met up with folks from our business last night for dinner. Was great to see everyone, sad to see how much the hate the new owners. Don't understand Gods plan in this one and I hope it will be revealed. We've got it pretty good, just not the staff, or so it would seem.Camped out at the property with the 3 grandsons a week ago. Used Lucy to make the campsite, do you think that's un-camplike?

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We are the Crawfords - Brad, Alisha, Brodie, Jonah & Graysen. We work with Engineering Ministries International's (EMI's) office in Colorado, having previously lived and worked out of EMI's Uganda (Kampala, Uganda) and UK (Colchester, Essex) offices. This blog is a chronicle of our lives working with EMI.